Barcelona (Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé song)
| "Barcelona" | |
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"Barcelona" is a single released by Queen vocalist Freddie Mercury and opera singer Montserrat Caballé. Taken from the pair's collaborative album Barcelona, it also appeared on Queen's Greatest Hits III.
The song reflects Mercury's love of opera with his high notes and Caballe's operatic vocals backed by a full orchestra. It was one of the biggest hits of Mercury's solo career, reaching number eight in the UK Singles Chart when first released in 1987. In 1992, after being used for the 1992 Summer Olympics (for which it was originally commissioned before Mercury's death in 1991), the track climbed even higher and peaked at number 2 in the UK.
In 2004, BBC Radio 2 listed Barcelona at #41 in its Sold On Song Top 100, stating:
Not surprisingly for a popstar with such operatic pretensions Freddie Mercury had been a long time fan of Monserrat Caballé. They struck up an unlikely friendship after Mercury had quipped on Spanish television that he was hoping to meet the Spanish Diva during a visit to Barcelona in 1986. Word of the interview got back to Caballe and in February the following year Mercury and producer Mike Moran went over to Barcelona to meet her. They became friends and Caballe called on Freddie when the search was on for a song to commemorate the Olympic Games in Barcelona. As she recalls: "He was a big opera fan and had come to see me in Barcelona. And when the mayor asked for a song to commemorate the Olympic Games we thought of him. He came to see me in Covent Garden. We worked on some ideas, he sat at the piano and we ended up improvising all through the night, but it was worth it". Sweeping, grand and ostentatious, it is the kind of classicised pop music accessible to a mainstream audience. The song was an international hit with the video showing both Mercury and Caballe camping it up and winning an award in the US. Sadly, the plan for them both to perform the song at the 1992 Olympics never happened. Mercury died of bronchial pneumonia resulting from AIDS in November the year before and Caballé, stricken, refused to sing it with anyone else and the song was not performed at the ceremony.[1]
Prior to the start of the 1999 UEFA Champions League Final between Manchester United and Bayern Munich held at the Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona, Caballé performed "Barcelona" live, and was accompanied with a recording by Mercury who apeared on the stadiums electronic screen.[2]